While we cooked food, Bob, Bev, Brenda and Ray all came over
to see how we were doing and what the plan was.
We ate our eggs, sausage and cereal and went over the plan. Basically, Ben, Ray, Brenda and I were in a car,
Bob, Bev, Gabe and Jones were in the other car.
We had walkie talkies to communicate and I would be the navigator. We would start in West Richland and work our
way towards Pasco to get our coin at the end.
Ben and I cleaned up our campsite, did the dishes and put
everything we used back in the Escape.
We didn’t want to attract animals even though there were squirrels
dropping from trees. So far that morning
we saw two just fall from the trees and land on the ground unhurt. It’s like they were cats and they also had
nine lives. It was pretty weird to
watch. I gathered everything we might
need during the day and set it aside to take to Ray and Brenda’s red hamster
car while we listened to Jen’s rules on the event in the background. We followed everyone over to the event
shortly after. We signed the logbook,
which was a wine barrel (so appropriate for the region we were in), looked at the
various booths including Cache Advance and WSGA, we talked to a few people we
knew and hadn’t see in a while. It was
going to be a good day. The weather was
warm but not as hot as it was last year (111°) but around 85° or so.
We got our passports which were also our maps and headed back towards the event area. They had a GPS station all set up but none of us wanted to stand in the huge line. Ray talked to Mike and he said we could do it faster because he had all of them on a bookmark that wasn’t available to everyone else yet.
When the caches published, all 32 of them, we went to Mike and attempted to “technology hump” them to everyone who had an Oregon Garmin. It wasn’t working too well so we just put them on one GPS and went from there. It took us a while but oh well. We got into our designated cars (I rode with Brenda, Ray and Ben in the lead car and Jones, Gabe rode with Bob and Bev in the follow car.)
At 10:30, we set off to West Richland to start there and work our way towards Pasco. We went off the map because in the years past it was a great visual to see where the caches were so we did less backtracking. This year there were some hiccups. The caches were miss numbered and it confused us in Richland and Kennewick. We used walkie-talkies to communicate and it was still hard to hear Bev on the other end. We had to tell her to press the button then talk rather than doing both at the same time. We always heard the tail end of what she was saying. We had a couple of epic fails and some snort laughing during the trip and even a few times where Ben fell asleep in the back seat.
After five years of doing this coin challenge it was hard to come up with some new places to hide caches. We went to some of the same places as we did in the past years. A bunch of parks, parking lots, the trail along the Columbia River, the WSU TriCities campus, view points, wineries, a humane society, a few businesses (one with an inappropriate hotdog sign, which was awesome) and a few exact locations we’ve been to before. TC 2016 K07 - Spirits That Stay (GC67FWW) was at the winery, TC 2016 K08 - Halloween Shootout (GC6FN3D) was at the Benton County Humane Society and apparently I petted the dog too hard and made him sick.
When we got to the Richland portion we stopped at Leslie Grove Park and had lunch after we found the cache. TC 2016 R02 - Radioactive Heron (GC6BKVP) was a stump that they carved the inside out of and put a hinge on it for a door. It looked like a toilet so I sat on it like one.
We ate sandwiches, had chips, drinks, fruit and Brenda and Ray made a pasta salad that was really tasty. We were there for about 45 minutes, used the restroom and headed to get the rest of Richland so we could move onto Kennewick.
According to the map it would be beneficial to get the lone cache in west Pasco before we started Kennewick so we didn’t have to horribly back track. We jumped across the bridge, grabbed it really quickly and then headed back over the bridge to get Kennewick done as quickly as we could.
We ran into a few people here and there but when we got into Pasco, we ran into Ben and Jayme and got to see their little one Lucy, who was asleep in the back of the car. We found the cache and then spend a few minutes talking to them for a while. Brenda and Ray gave them one of their coins. A security officer stopped by to see what we were doing, since we were so close to the airport, Ben talked to him for about ten minutes. Bob and Bev’s car headed out to the next one, we assumed, and we followed them shortly after. We did not see them at the next cache. Where were they? The next few were very close to each other and you would have seen them. They were not in sight. Could they have gotten these that quickly? We went on without them and hoped that we ran into them at the state park to get our coins.
We got the last cache and were relieved that it was
over. We were so tired. It wasn’t really hot like last year but it
was still hot out. I was really excited
to take a shower. When we got to the
park I was really stoked to see the coin in person. I thought they did a great job on the design
last year but this year they definitely went above and beyond. The design of this year’s coin if you orient
it correctly will show you where the bonus cache was. They had a spot marked with a cone where you
stood and looked through the holes in the individual coins. It defeated the purpose at the event because you
knew where the cache was because there were a bunch of people swarming the cache
site.
We went over to the booth and had the volunteers check our
passports. We each received five pieces,
the base and the four coins that fit into the base. We sat at the nearby picnic table and assembled
them. Some of the pieces fit perfectly
and the others were quite snug.
Bob, Bev and their passengers made it to the park. We asked where they went and they said they
went and got gas. I did not hear them
say they went to get gas. They received their
coins and headed over to do the bonus.
We told them we were going to head to Cousin’s to get a table and if
they would meet us there when they were done.
They said okay and looked forward to dinner. We drove the nine miles to the main part of
Pasco. Last year we were shown this place
by Jen and we enjoyed it so much we came back this year.
We sat at the same table and decided what we wanted to
have. Our waitress was an airhead, we
ordered drinks, I had a Drop Top and Ben had an Irish Death, both Brenda and Ray
had some sort of a drink. We waited a
while and the waitress came back and took our orders, Bob and Bev were on their
way to the restaurant. I was so
hungry. Once everyone arrived, they
ordered and our food came. Ben and I got
water and ice all over the table and threw some at each other…we made a mess. We talked about the day and some of the
caches we did. We even talked about what
we were going to do on Sunday. Our plans
were still up in the air. All I know is
that it involved some sort of floating in a body of water.
We paid, then afterwards we grabbed the cache that was outside underneath a lamp skirt (Kissin’ Cousins, GC1M7DY) and then we said goodbye to everyone. Ben and I headed back to the state park to shower and get ready for bed. We watched Pixels until the computer died. We were so tired we just passed out afterwards. I had planned on being up and going before 8ish.
Next Adventure: Heading Home: Potholes State Park, Ellensburg, Iron Horse Brewery and Traffic
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